12 hours from now I'll be getting up to get ready to drop Eidie off at Jolene's house, and heading back to Seattle. Less than week from when I was there, I'm going back for surgery. Check in at the 'We Cut You' Hotel is at 6am, and surgery begins at 7:30. It's about 3-4 hours and recovery is 2-4 hours long so by this time tomorrow I should be sitting up in bed with a gluey neck and telling jokes to the nurses in a raspy voice.
Maybe I'll try singing with a sexy voice like Phoebe Bouffet.
I'm nervous about the surgery and not because I think it won't go well, but just because it's surgery. I can get really stuck on the fact that part of my body is going to be removed from me. I'm not a circumcised dude so I never had to really look at this before- the surgeries I've had in the past removed things that weren't supposed to be there anyway. I could get stuck on it but as a birth professional I know that I can wallow and be upset (boy can we make a fat living on wallowing on our wounds!) or I can move into the acceptance that dude, I have cancer, and this is a small price to pay.
I'm all for moving on.
All the same, I know this will sound weird, but I have finally settled into some sort of semblance of identity as a person who has cancer. I've gotten less spontaneous about my need to discuss it, I've worked on my expectations of others. I've learned how to make it funny and not so awkwardly so.
I know who I am with cancer now.
Who will I be afterward? I want to be in curiosity about that but at this moment I feel a little stream of panic inside- I have to adjust again? So soon? I'm on a ship staring at a landscape that will be my new home but nothing is familiar and this ship was starting to get comfy. I don't know if that will make sense but I'm putting it out there anyway- it's just what's real for me right now.
I have my altar items all together and I know I probably won't get my own room until I'm out of surgery, but it will all come with me and be set up for me while I'm there, and when I get home I'll find somewhere accessible for it.
This healing is SOOOO not about having cancer. It's really about me as a person- it's about having the courage to pick up the loose ends and tug them and see where they lead me, and inevitably it's somewhere I knew I was supposed to go. This healing is about keeping me focused on what's ahead rather than on what's behind. It's about cracking my heart open a little more, so that I can love better and deeper - love others, but love myself too.
I hope this new land has peanut butter cookies.
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